Privilege Among the Marginalized

ORIGINALLY WRITTEN: November 2024

NOTES: Written as a frustration to the "anti-transfeminist"/"transmisandry truther" movement on Tumblr, but applicable to most conversations around intersectionality within marginalized communities. Primarily, within the LGBTQ+/Queer Community (as someone who is a white transmasculine individual).

Always love it when a response to genuine intercommunity bigotry is “bigots want infighting :///” like…

Do y'all think being part of xyz group means your immune to causing any harm ever????

Or that being part of xyz group means you can’t ever hold a position of privilege??

Wild ass belief system honestly.

The logic people use to justify the mra-ideology in trans spaces is just the blatant ignoring of intersectionality and it pisses me off every time. Like. The only arguments are ever:

• Ignoring the concept of intersectionality to the point you rewrite bioessentialism (re: trasmascs can’t hold power over transfems, they were socialized as women while they were socialized as men! That’s big and scary and evil worrying!)
• … I forgot what other point I had but it was there and it’s some bullshit and now I’m even more annoyed bc I forgot it jfalksjfalsjf I REMEMBERED. It was acting like multiple axes of oppression can’t exist, and that bigotry cannot happen on numerous levels.

Which the latter point kind of circles back to intersectionality, but it’s moreso in the way that people consider “oppression olympics”.

Acting like other marginalized folk cannnot be capable of harm ever because there is always something worse™, so those presumed “below” them should just “sit down and shut up”/“stop stirring the pot”/“cease lateral aggression”/“think of the big picture”

Which is like… there’s a huge difference between acknowledging that organization efforts should focus on pressing issues, and using those pressing issues to silence any form of criticism that makes you personally feel attacked.

There’s a difference between saying “hey, I understand your frustration and we see how this plays into the bigger picture” and “hey, stop calling this out when there are literally worse things happening”.

One is sympathetic/empathetic. One is victim-shaming. Y'all (nbh, I fucking hope) are victim blaming losers.